Coal in Virginia

The coal in western Virginia was created 280 to 360 million years ago, when what today is Virginia was near the Equator and prior to the mountain-building orogenies that created the Appalachian Mountains. Rivers flowed off mountains east of today's Appalachian Plateau, draining into a shallow sea to the west. Swamps developed at the mouths of the rivers (today's Central Appalachian Basin), near the sea.1

The plants absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and photosynthesis provided the energy to "fix" the carbon in plant cells. When plants died, bacteria/fungi decomposed some organic material. Other plant cells were covered by remains of plants. Plants in the warm climate created organic material faster than it could decay during the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian ("Carboniferous") periods, as oxygen was blocked from reaching the buried layers. Pressure/heat from sediments that washed off the mountains, accumulating as the land between the mountains and sea subsided, transformed the dead cells into peat and then into coal as volatile gases were driven off and carbon concentrated.

What today is the Appalachian Plateau experienced cyclical periods of subsidence. Swamps near the shoreline sank along with the underlying block of crust, and sediments (first mud, then sand) covered the organic deposits. When basins subsided low enough to be covered by the nearby ocean, lime-rich sediments were deposited on top of the mud and sand. When tectonic uplift would raise the crustal block above sea level, fresh-water swamps would grow again.

The cycle of subsidence and uplift repeated often. Heat/pressure metamorphosed the mud layers into shale, the sand layers metamorphosed into sandstone, the lime-rich sediments metamorphosed into limestone, and the organic swamp layers metamorphosed into coal. The percentage of carbon, sulfur, nitrogen, and other elements in the coal varied depending upon the plants that were in the swap and the conditions under which the organic material was compressed into coal.

Virginia ended up with 76 discrete coal beds, of which about half are mined commercially today. The four most valuable coal beds were named Pocahontas No. 3, Jawbone, Splash Dam, and Dorchester. Stratigraphic intervals that include layers of coal deposited in the Pennylvanian time period (290 to 323 million years ago) vary in thickness from 800 feet to over 5,000 feet. The thickest stratigraphic intervals are in the eastern side of the Southwest Virginia Coalfield, because sediments washed down mountains on the east side of the basin.2

In most cases, the old plant material was squeezed enough in the Appalachian Plateau of southwestern Virginia (modern-day Buchanan, Wise, and Dickenson counties) to drive off water and other volatile gases to form bituminous coal, but not enough to concentrate the percentage of carbon to form anthracite or even semi-anthracite coal beds.

Coal in the Valley and Ridge physiographic province of Virginia (including coal beds in Montgomery and Rockingham counties) was buried deep enough in Appalachian Orogeny to be metamorphosed into semi-anthracite.

Coal beds in the Triassic Basin near Richmond and Farmville were formed 205 to 245 million years ago, when Pangea was splitting up rather than colliding. In the Triassic Basin, pressure to convert organic plant material into coal came from just the weight of overlying sediments, without tectonic squeezing - that is why the Chesterfield County coal is bituminous, rather than semi-anthracite.

anthracite and semi-anthracite coal fields (shown in yellow) are located in the Valley and Ridge province of Pennsylvania and Virginia, where burial underneath ancient mountains formed in Africa-North America collision created extra heat/pressure
Source: USGS Open-File Report OF 96-92, Coal Fields of the Conterminous United States

The early colonists were aware of coal, but chose to use wood as their fuel. As historian Robert Beverley noted in 1705:3

And as for Coals, it is not likely they should ever be used there in any thing, but Forges and great Towns, if ever they happen to have any; for, in their Country Plantations, the Wood grows at every Man's Door so fast, that after it has been cut down, it will in Seven Years time, grow up again from Seed, to substantial Fire-Wood; and in Eighteen or Twenty Years 'twill come to be very good Board-Timber.

and

Their Fewel [fuel] is altogether Wood, which every Man burns at Pleasure, it being no other charge to him, than the cutting, and carrying it home. In all new Grounds it is such an Incumbrance, that they are forced to burn great heaps of it, to rid the Land. They have very good Pit-Coal (as is formerly mention'd) in several places of the Country, but no Man has yet thought it worth his while to make use of them, having Wood in Plenty, and lying more convenient for him.

In eastern Virginia, coal was mined in the 1700's from the Triassic Basin west of Richmond/Petersburg, near Midlothian in Chesterfield County. That Richmond basin was formed as the Atlantic Ocean opened up AFTER the Appalachian Mountains were uplifted, so the coal near Richmond is younger (in geologic age) that the coal near the West Virginia/Kentucky border.

The first coal mined in Virginia came from the Richmond basin. From Chesterfield County south of Richmond, coal was carried on rails in mule-pulled carts to Manchester and Richmond. Later, mules were replaced by locomotives fueled by wood. The small size of that Midlothian coal field limited its importance to the local market. Richmond and Petersburg grew economically because of manufacturing supported by James River and Appomattox River waterpower, more than from coal brought out of Midlothian.

The Triassic Basins west of Richmond were developed next. Coal was mined from the Briery Creek basin near Prince Edward Courthouse in the 1840's, and the Piedmont Coal Company mine opened in the Farmville basin in 1860.4

The coal fields of the Valley and Ridge physiographic province (including the Dora coal field in Rockingham County) had value, but were too small to support large-scale industrialization. Managers of iron furnaces in the Valley and Ridge province relied upon locally-produced charcoal, created from partially-burned wood, until after the Civil War.

Theoretically the iron producers west of the Blue Ridge could have imported coal from eastern Virginia. However, transportation costs made use of Triassic Basic coal from the Midlothian mines infeasible. It would have been too expensive to purchase coal from the Richmond-area mines, ship the coal up the James River on the canal boats, and finally haul the coal by wagon to furnaces in the Shenandoah Valley or in the Great Valley south of the James River.

In Montgomery County, the Merrimac Mine on Price Mountain (between Christiansburg and Blacksburg) shipped coal to Norfolk via the Virginia and Tennessee railroad east to Lynchburg in the 1850's. Tradition holds that, from there, the coal from the Merrimac Mine travelled all the way to Portsmouth and fueled the Confederate ironclad Merrimac (also spelled Merrimack) that dueled with the Union ironclad, the Monitor. The first battle between ironclads was also the first battle between ships fueled exclusively by coal.

The "coal counties" in southwestern Virginia were unable to ship their product to market by rail before the Civil War. After 1865, Northern financiers supported the extension of Virginia railroads into the timber-rich and coal-rich mountains.

The Pocahontas Mine in Tazewell County has a seam of high-quality coal 13 feet thick, making it unusually easy to mine. By World War I, after the Norfolk and Western railroad built a rail line down the New River from Radford, then through West Virginia to the coal fields, the Pocahontas Mine became a major supplier of coal for the Navy.

The role of coal has been critical in shaping the growth of Southwest Virginia for over a century. The Appalachian coal fields had national and international significance, once they were developed in the 1880's, but the region has alternated between boom and bust economic cycles.

coal mines are concentrated in Buchanan, Dickenson, and Wise counties, but also located on that portion of the Appalachian Plateau that extends into Lee, Russell, and Tazewell counties
Source: Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Elk Restoration and Management Options for Southwest Virginia (Figure 4)

The demand for coal surged in the 1880's, when the railroads made it possible to ship the bulky product to the commercial marketplaces. In the 1980's, the demand dropped due to Clean Air Act requirements for low-sulfur coal (available from Powder River Basin in Wyoming), and the supply of low-cost coal from Virginia dropped with the exhaustion of the easy-to-mine coalbeds.

abandoned mine lands in Virginia include coal mines near Richmond, Harrisonburg, and Blacksburg, as well as in the Appalachian Plateau
Source: Office of Surface Mining - Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System, e-AMLIS

most abandoned mines in Virginia are located in the Appalachian Plateau, reflecting coal mining in the century before the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed in 1977
Source: Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) Flexviewer page

Because the coal fields and the oil/gas fields in Virginia are concentrated in the southwestern part of the state, the Virginia Department of Mines, Mineral and Energy used to maintain multiple offices in the region. Offices in Keen Mountain (Buchanan County) and Abingdon (Washington County) were consolidated with the offices in Lebanon (Russell County) in 2009. Separate offices still remain at Big Stone Gap (in Wise County).

The Southwest Virginia economy is still vulnerable to "bust" as well as "boom." Some mines are still operating, however. Mine owners are concerned that there will be too few trained miners if demand increases, because the children of retired miners moved away or chose other lines of work and need formal training in coal mining.

For the long term, the Department of Energy predicts that increased demand for coal will be met by other regions. Even if a "clean coal" process could be developed for using coal to meet increased demand for electricity, Virginia's coal fields are not likely to see a major jump in production. Demand for coal will be met by increased mining in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, or in the Indiana/Illinois/Western Kentucky coal fields.5

The decline of the coal industry in southwestern Virginia has affected both the economy and the politics of the region. The culture of the region remained focused on coal mining, even as the number of people employed in the industry has declined substantially.

The loss of unionized miners has reduced the strength of the Democratic Party in the region, which depends upon urban voters to win statewide elections. Republican candidates in southwestern Virginia have capitalized on rural voter's concerns about social issues such as gun control and concerns about the size and power of government, and also benefitted from Republican control of the process for redrawing boundaries of House of Delegates districts after the 2010 election.

Rick Boucher, who had won 19 elections as a Democrat to represent the "Fighting Ninth" congressional district, was defeated by a Republican opponent in 2010. By 2014, Republicans controlled every seat in the state legislature from the region except for one state senator's district.6

In the 2012 elections, the Republican Party accused the Obama Administration of conducting a "War on Coal" in in the southwestern part of Virginia. An October, 2012 rally in Grundy drew 5,500 people - when the total population in Buchanan County was less than 24,000, and there were only 5,000 coal miners in Virginia (a 50% drop since 1990).7

A major justification for that partisan claim was the decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and to issue other regulations that could be a "train wreck" for coal-fired power plants. However, one of the greatest long-term threats to coal was not political, but economic. As described by the Congressional Research Service, the development of natural gas combined cycle technology in the 1990's offered an alternative, cost-effective way to generate electricity at lower cost than maintaining old coal-fired power plants:8

The primary impacts of many of the rules will largely be on coal-fired plants more than 40 years old that have not, until now, installed state-of-the-art pollution controls. Many of these plants are inefficient and are being replaced by more efficient combined cycle natural gas plants, a
development likely to be encouraged if the price of competing fuel—natural gas—continues to be low, almost regardless of EPA rules.

...Even before the advent of the "train-wreck" rules, very few coal-fired plants were being built... [S]ince 1990, more than 80% of new capacity has been natural gas-fired. These plants are highly efficient; they are cost-competitive with coal; and they emit no SO2, no mercury, and no other hazardous air pollutants. Without scrubber sludge to manage, they also do not need to meet effluent guidelines. Natural gas-fired power plants also have an advantage with regard to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: for the same amount of electric generation, they emit only half the GHGs of coal-fired units.

Some Federal regulations affect the cost of mining coal, such as Mine Health Safety Administration mandates to require effective ventilation systems to minimize the potential of methane gas explosions. After 1977, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) has imposed a fee on active mines in order to generate funds to reclaim abandoned mines.

For current coal mines, SMCRA requires coal mining companies to restore the approximate original contour of the land surface after strip mining is concluded. There is an exception for mountaintop removal operations. Operators can reshape the original topography of the site to fill valleys with the overburden removed from above the coal seam and create a level plateau of a gently rolling contour with no "highwalls."9

The EPA regulations regarding air quality and coal ash disposal have a substantial impact on the cost of burning "steam coal" to create electricity. "Met" (metallurgical purposes) coal is mined for making steel rather than electricity, and most is exported through ports at Hampton Roads - so the EPA regulations will have little impact on the "met" coal business.

Most Virginia mines operate for a short period until thin seams of economically-recoverable coal have been removed through the room-and-pillar method. The Buchanan Mine, near Mavisdale, is an exception, and celebrated its 30th anniversary of operations in 2013. It was the only Virginia mine using the longwall method to extract coal from the thick, highly-valuable Pocahontas 3 seam. The need to vent methane to prevent explosions in the mine helped trigger the development of coal bed methane, which became a high-value energy resource in the Buchanan Coalfield. In the early 1990's, the General Assembly passed legislation to clarify ownership and royalty payments for coal bed methane. Consol then built a 50-mile pipeline from Buchanan to West Virginia, and later additional pipelines, in order to ship the natural gas through the interstate pipeline system.10

Of the 25 coal-producing states, Virginia was in the middle for tonnage of production in 2011. Wyoming mined over 20 times as much coal as Virginia. Both West Virginia and Kentucky produced over 5 times as much coal as Virginia. In 2011, the 49 surface mines in Virginia produced 55% of the state's coal, while 61 underground mines produced the remaining 45% - but those statistics vary significantly each year, as companies react to market demand and cost of extraction by opening/closing individual mines.11

The same statistics from the US Energy Information Administration showed that Virginia's mines were relatively small producers in 2011, averaging just slightly over 200,000 short tons/mine. On average, that was just 10% of the tonnage produced at each of Colorado's 10 mines. Production/mine is much higher at surface mines, and only three states (West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania) had more underground mines than Virginia. Only two states (Virginia and West Virginia) had more underground than surface mines.

in 2011, the 110 operating coal mines in Virginia produced less tonnage/mine than most other coal-producing states
Source: US Energy Information Administration, Rankings: Coal Production, 2011

The US Energy Information Administration has noted that 90% of coal mined in the United States was used to generate electricity - but the competition from natural gas was increasing:12

While coal has been the largest source of electricity generation for over 60 years, its annual share of generation declined from 49% in 2007 to 42% in 2011 as some power producers switched to lower-priced natural gas.

...Although coal-fired generation still holds the largest share among all sources of electricity, its use has declined since 2007 due to a combination of slow growth in electricity demand, strong price competition with natural gas, and increased use of renewable technologies.

...In 2009, coal began losing its price advantage over natural gas for electricity generation in some parts of the country, particularly in the eastern United States as a surge in natural gas production from domestic shale deposits (made possible by advances in drilling technologies) substantially reduced the price of natural gas.

The last coal-fired power plant built in Virginia, the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center in Wise County, started producing electricity in 2012. Since then, utilities have chosen natural gas rather than coal for new power plants, such as Dominion's 1,358-megawatt, $1.3 billion Brunswick County Power Station.

Even industrial facilities in southwestern Virginia are switching from coal to gas, in part to comply with Clean Air Act pollution standards and in part to reduce operating costs. In 2013, the Celanese Corporation in Giles County announced plans to replace seven coal-fired boilers with six natural gas-fired boilers. When completed, a facility that burned coal since 1939 will rely instead upon natural gas.13